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At first her father protested, "Oh Ida. Why can't you eat with us? We miss you."
For a while he called from the kitchen, "Head-dyyyyyy," in a singsong voice, "my sweet."
Three months in and both her father and Janet ignored her. Ida would listen to their conversation (which consisted of their day the weather shoes co-workers nothing nothing nothing) and sometimes she yelled something in.
"That is a great dress on you," she heard her father say to his wife.
"It's ugly and cheap!" Ida yelled in.
In the beginning her father would yell back "Ida, if you want to speak to us, please come in here and sit down. Otherwise, stop it."
Three months in and Ida had become a ghost.
"I heard that Kenny D'Ambrosio is thinking of buying another store," Ida yelled in one day after walking by the shop. It wasn't true — Ida had not heard anything. Ida liked to say "D'Ambrosio" even if Janet wasn't around.
Janet and her father ignored her — none of them had ever mentioned Kenny before — and Ida made smacking noises with her mouth while she ate oatmeal. She thought of the teeth on Kenny — the two eyeteeth that stuck out a bit and looked a little like a vampire, a little like he'd bite.
Tomorrow, Ida decided to get up her nerve and buy some meat. She couldn't decide what kind but then dreamed of capicole. She liked the word — it sounded tasty and had two ways of being pronounced. She had never tried it, and wanted a taste.
Ida wore her navy blue lace-ups with the heel and her matching navy-blue wool skirt-suit, even though it was warm out. She walked to D'Ambrosio Meats to order capicole.
She had looked it up in the dictionary. The way to say it was with the "e" at the end, it said. It was from a pig. She would throw it out before getting back to the house.
Ida took a breath and then opened the door to the shop. Above her a bell rang. Her hands in the gloves were sweaty and gross. They were gloves her mother used to make her wear
Kenny leaned against a wall, blowing smoke. Ida stared at him. |
so she wouldn't pick her skin in the night.
Kenny's father smoked a cigarette with his elbows on the steel counter.
"Hello, young lady," he said, "How are you doing on this lovely day?"
He smiled at her with his half-smile.
Ida looked at all the meats. They looked clean, the way they were sliced down the middle; they were shaped in odd ways and she wondered what parts of what animal each one was.
"I'll have a half pound of capicole, please," Idea said.
"Capicole, coming right up," he said, pronouncing it like "soul," without the "eee."
Ida wondered if he had said it on purpose to correct her, but then he smiled in that way again, and Ida could see where the son came from. When he bent down in the case to get the meat, Ida stood on her tiptoes to see if Kenny was in the back.
"Would you like it thin?" Mr. D'Ambrosio asked. Ida didn't know.
"No. Thick please. Very thick," she said.
"Okay, young lady," he said, slicing three thick pieces on the machine. He wrapped them up for her in white paper, folding it a certain way that looked special. He popped open a paper bag and handed her the package like it was a present.
Ida paid, and began walking out the door.
"Have a nice day," Mr. D'Ambrosio said, and Ida smiled and looked behind her for Kenny once more.
Her money was wasted; there was no Kenny in sight. But she had enjoyed buying the food anyway. Perhaps Mr. D'Ambrosio thought she had a family who liked to eat capicole with green beans. Perhaps he thought that beneath her white gloves there was a heart-shaped ring with lots of karats. Perhaps he thought someone loved her, and she was buying food because she loved them too.
She looked back in the window at Mr. D'Ambrosio, who had his elbows back on the counter, smoking a cigarette. He looked like he wasn't thinking at all.
She began to walk away, then heard the sound of a bottle drop in the alley between the butcher's and the cleaner's. She looked down at the long thing aisle where Kenny leaned against a wall,
Ida ran down to the mailbox at the end of the block in bare feet, before she lost her nerve. |
blowing smoke.
Ida stared at him. He picked up the bottle, and shook it in his mouth trying to get the last drops. It was alcohol, Ida smelled. Kenny turned and saw her.
"Hey," he said, and Ida started to run. She ran as fast as she could in her pencil skirt and shoes. She ran, hoping she wouldn't rip the stockings she had stolen from Janet's drawer. Ida ran, holding the ham in her hand, and dropped it on the street before her own. She ran until she got to her house, then went inside it to bolt the door and stand against it, panting, like she was being chased.
First Ida spritzed the perfume on herself, and then on the paper and in the envelope. The paper was pink. Ida didn't know why her sister Anita had given her this stationery last Hanukkah.
Ida had written a thank-you note for the stationery on the stationery that she had given to her. Then she had put the rest of the paper in her desk drawer and had not used it since. After the paper was dry from the perfume, Ida wrote at the top of it:
March 4, 1946
Dearest Kenny,
I know that I am married now, but I still hold you in my heart. I made a huge mistake that only now I can see clearly. You are the most beautiful man I have ever met. I miss your voice, your smell, your arms and legs, your chest, your lips, etc. Kenny, you are a real man even if you didn't go to war. Will you meet me next Friday evening outside Berdick's at six? I really need to speak with you.
Your Love,
Janet
Ida wrote softly, without digging into the paper the way she usually did. She sprayed the paper one more time, and then addressed it to Mr. Kenny D'Ambrosio. She put in her own return address without Janet's name, and put two stamps on it, just to make sure. Then she ran down to the mailbox at the end of the block in bare feet, before she lost her nerve.
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